Hi, everybody. This is Open To Debate. I'm John Don Van. Let's talk a little bit about

what's right and what's wrong in a certain situation. So when you copy somebody's words

and then pass them off as your own, that is called plagiarism and everybody knows it's

wrong. It is theft. Another version of that is forgery. But when a filmmaker builds a scene

into a movie that evokes, say, Harvard Hitchcock, that is seen as the compliment, a tribute

even. And that's all right. Okay, so we get how those two examples work. But there is a good

deal of disagreement when it comes to an artist lifting an idea from a different culture in a way

that is seen as taking advantage of its ideas and even cashing in on those ideas. The term

coin to capture this concept is cultural appropriation and it raises a lot of issues. When is bringing

in another culture's ideas, indeed, more like theft. And when is it more like tribute? And how do we

tell the difference? And what ethical guidelines does all of this suggest should be followed?

Who gets to make that call? Should anybody even be making that call? Well, that is some of what we're

going to be taking on in this episode. Here is the question we are debating. Should artists be allowed

to borrow from cultures besides their own? Answering yes to that question, he's a political scientist

and author, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

His book is out. It is called The Identity Trap, a story of ideas and power in our time. That book

is by Yasha Monk. Yasha, thanks so much for joining us once again at Open to Debate. Always the

pleasure zone. And answering no to the question should artists be allowed to borrow from cultures

besides their own? He's an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, author of

Games Agency as Art T. Nguyen. Welcome T to Open to Debate. It's so great to have you.

It's great to be here. So before we get started, I just want to get a sense of what

motivates each of you to be involved in this debate in the first place. Yasha, I'll go to you

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